Although a foot injury curtailed Jonathan Fuller’s training this spring, he still managed to run the Woody’s half-marathon Sunday in Red Deer.
Fuller and his two sisters, Rebecca and Elizabeth, completed the half-marathon in a celebratory week for the Castor siblings.
The twins — Jonathan and Rebecca — turned 22 on Monday, while Elizabeth celebrated her 25th birthday last Thursday.
They teamed up for birthday cake Sunday after running the same event in family fashion.
Jonathan is a competitive cross-country runner who finished fifth in last year’s half-marathon, but his fractured right foot kept him out of the upper echelon Sunday. He opted to run further back in the pack with his sisters and crossed the finish line alongside Rebecca, about 15 minutes before Elizabeth.
“Since we’re getting older now, not everybody lives at home, so it’s actually nice to spend more time with my sisters,” said Jonathan Fuller, a kinesiology student at the University of Alberta.
“When we get together, it’s just more fun to really hang out with each other, rather than doing our own thing.”
Running is a way of life for the Fullers. The twins trained together as far back as their school days at Gus Wetter in Castor and at Red Deer College.
Jonathan has been a U of A student for the past two years, and he runs with the Bears cross-country team while studying in Edmonton. He trains year-round, and even overcame an injury this winter to bounce back and finish the Woody’s half-marathon.
“Probably the beginning of March, my foot began to hurt when I was running,” said Fuller, now home in Castor for the summer. “I tried (to continue) running for a week, and it wasn’t feeling any better, so I went to see the doctor, got an X-ray and it turned out I fractured it.
“It’s my third metatarsal of my foot and it’s a stress fracture. It’s not like a complete fracture or an open fracture. It’s a closed fracture.
“I think (the cause) was heavy training load and a change in training surfaces, just moving from less forefooting to more asphalt, more grippier footing, which allows you to apply more force, and then stress.”
He wore extra support on his right foot for Sunday’s race.
“I’d say it’s been at least nine weeks, maybe coming on 10 weeks, since I first fractured it,” he said. “So about two weeks ago, I started running again, and I was trying to run every day. And my foot started feeling sore, so I backed off a bit.
“But the week preceding this race (in Red Deer), I was able to run every day, 10 kilometres, so it was good.”
Among the 801 finishers, Fuller finished 229th in 1:55:35.20, just behind twin Rebecca in 1:55:34.90. (Jonathan’s top-five time last year was 1:18:50.45).
Elizabeth fell at the finish line, but she placed in the top 500 with a time of 2:11:03.90. She lives in Stettler and works with the County of Stettler.
Jonathan Fuller has a summer job in Castor with the County of Paintearth. He returns to university in the fall for the final leg of his undergraduate studies.
“I’m enjoying it,” he said. “I have one term of schooling (left), and then a practicum, and then I’m finished my undergraduate bachelor of science in kinesiology.
“(For my practicum), I’m hoping to get in with a physical therapist, or maybe shadowing a researcher and helping out the researcher that way.”
As a runner, he’s already a student of the game. His daily log is ample evidence.
“Right now, I get up at five o’clock in the morning, usually, and go for a run right before work,” said Fuller, almost five-foot-nine and about 140 pounds.
“But during the school year, it’s more like I get up at six and go for a run. It’s not too bad, at all, really. There’s always the benefit of getting up and going for a run first thing in the morning, because other things don’t interfere with it.
“And I find I can actually think better in class and focus. It helps get rid of stress from exams. I’m enjoying it and getting the marks I need, so it’s good.”
Last summer, on the same Castor trails that he knows so well, Fuller tried to reach at least 80 miles per week.
“My highest was probably about 95 miles,” he said.
Fuller hopes to continue building his mileage this summer, as long as he’s healthy.
He plans to run the Calgary Stampede half-marathon, and both twins are part of teams in the Kananaskis 100-mile relay race.
“Every year, (RDC coach) Brian Stackhouse always organizes a team relay for the K100, and we each run a leg in that race, and that’s always really fun, just because you’re with a group of good runners and it’s a good environment,” he said.
Although he prefers small-town life to the city pace, Fuller’s passion for running has seemingly no limits. He lived on the U of A campus this past school year and the neighbourhood suited his training goals.
“The university is right beside the river, so there’s a good system of trails right there, so it worked out very well that way,” he said. “It’s kind of part of my daily routine.”
Although he celebrated a birthday this week, Fuller joked that his age is still a mystery to many people he meets at university and in running circles.
“People perceive that I’m very young,” he said with a smile. “They think I’m in high school still, and I’m, ‘I can understand,’ because I do look very young.
“I get it a lot. People are always asking, ‘How old are you?’ Or, ‘What year are you in?’ I’m like, ‘I’m in my third, fourth year here,’ ”
When it comes to running, however, Fuller has long been considered a man among boys.
FINISH LINE: Stettler teacher Stefan Olafson, 37, placed 200th in the half-marathon with a 1:54:04.45 clocking. …Wally Cameron, 74, of Alix finished the half-marathon in 3:21:55.00. Cameron’s grandson, Cassidy Meston, placed eighth overall in the 10-kilometre race and won the 19-and-under category. Meston, 18, posted a time of 43:44.35.